BRASSAI'S PARIS AT NIGHT (1930s)

I think I can guess how Brassai must have felt. Even today the area around Montmarte (spelled right?) is full of mystery after dark. Late at night when the streets are empty and fog covers the treetops the effect is unforgetable. Click to enlarge.

Holy Cow! The text is slanted! I'm leaking consonants! Anyway, the quote above is the reason I put up this piece about Brassai. Before reading it, it never occurred to me that a part of town that's particularly appealing or mysterious should be left standing even if the architecture is just so-so. A street or a square or a neighborhood that attracts people, that exerts an indefinable magnetism or charisma over generations, should be preserved even if no one can figure out what the attraction consists of.

A famous thriller writer called this "felicitous architecture." He pointed out that some churches seem especially "holy." Others seem especially suited for weddings. He talked about a cheerful room in Williamsburg where three future presidents proposed to their wives. On the other hand he talked about places where murders routinely happen. Maybe he's right. Remember Van Gogh's picture of the ugly red pool room? He called it a room you could die in. Maybe architecture and spaces have the power to subtley influence human behavior.

The trench-coated figure above is Henry Miller who would frequently drop by unannounced to see if Brassai wanted to explore the night-time streets with him.

Another terrific quote! You wouldn't want to do without the melting clocks and flaming horses of full-blown surrealism but you could argue that the greatest pictures of all are the more subtle ones which show the weirdness underlying everyday reality.

WHICH BACKGROUND MEDIUM FITS FUNNY CARTOONS?

Pen & ink with light wash?

Ink wash (above)?

Watercolor (above)?

Gouache (above)?

Acrylics (above)?

Computer (above)?

Myself, I would say the ink wash method supports gags and cartoony drawings the best. If humor was the only factor to consider I'd say the whole industry should switch to ink wash (or a black & white gouache equivalent) tomorrow. It's funnier by a mile.

The problem is that audiences like color and so do I. I can't help it, I like beautiful cartoons. In my opinion the color mediums that best support the comedy/beauty combination are watercolor and gouache. Some of the best and most indisputably funny Ren & Stimpy episodes used acrylics but the acrylics were done in a style that often looked like gouache so they're difficult to classify.

Certainly the background medium that supports comedy least is the computer. Can any background be funny if it's colored in a computer? I've laughed at gags in shows that had minimal computer backgrounds but in those cases the job of the background was simply to not get in the way. It wasn't a positive comedic asset, except as a design element. There are probably exceptions to this but I'm too sleepy to think of them.

KANDINSKY'S COLOR THEORIES

It's unfortunate that most of the color theorists since Chevreul have been abstract painters rather than representational ones. I like to thumb through my Itten, Albers and Kandinsky color books once in a while but I have to admit that they're not very usefull. They are a lot of fun, though. Here just for the heck of it, are a couple of Kandinsky color theories. Maybe they'll spur you on to make theories of your own.

According to Kandinsky certain colors (above) have an affinity for certain forms. A dull shape like a circle deserves a dull color like blue. A shape with intermediate interest like a square deserves an intermediate color like red. A dynamic, interesting shape like a triangle deserves an enegetic, luminous, psychotic color like yellow.

A hexagon is midway in interest between a square and a triangle so it gets the midway color it deserves, orange. Toilet cover seats get green.

Lines also have an affinity for certain colors. Bold, dynamic lines like diagonals get a bold color like yellow. Less drastic diagonals get a less drastic color, red. Dead lines that are nearly horizontal get a dead color like black. Slightly active lines like verticals get a dull color like blue.

Kandinsky even has a theory about coloring lines according to their centrality in the composition. Lines in the middle get yellow. Sad, unloved lines that hug the edge of the frame should get dull colors.

The same goes for angles. Drastic accute angles get drastic colors, more sedate obtuse angles get bland colors like blue.

Ditto curves. Of course a line usually has both drastic and sedate curves and angles and the color of the line changes accordingly.

Here's all these theories in a single painting. Interesting, huh?

THEORY CORNER SPORTS PAGE: MUHAMMAD ALI & SECRETARIAT

Just to show Ali's method, here's (above) a quick win that he scored against Brian Lamb in 1966.




Above and below Cassius Clay (Ali) vs. Sonny Liston. Liston hated Clay and on one of the rounds they kept fighting even after the bell. What a battle!







The fight was stopped by a doctor after part three, so if you're in a hurry you can skip part four. Watch it if you can, though; it's a fascinating glimpse into what the people who ran the fights were like in the 60s.





Above and below two races by Secretariat in the early 70s. These are hands down the best races I've ever seen. Seabiscuit certainly was an interesting horse, and I liked the film, but could he do this?

MY FAVORITE ARTIST'S MODEL BOOK

I have to admit that a reference book about artist's models is a strange subject to post about on the Saturday before Easter. I hope the airbrushed nudity doesn't offend anyone. I'm so excited about finding this rare and useful book in the library that I feel I have to share it so that I can free my mind to think about other things. Click to enlarge.

I'll let you know what the title is as soon as I can locate a copy to buy on the net.

I LOVE WRITERS!

I love writers, real writers, but our industry doesn't seem to have attracted many of them.

Visit an animation artist's site and you're likely to see samples of what the guy did recently, paintings by favorite artists, and the like. Visit an animation writers site and you're likely to see gripes about not getting residuals, nostalgia for super-fast writers of the past, shop talk about who's hiring and the like. No celebration of beautiful words, no discussion of clever plots. If you're a fan of good writing, which I am, it's disappointing.

One thing that does abound in animation writers' sites is slick prose. The notes and memos these guys send to each other are beautiful. I don't mind saying that I'm envious. If any of these guys offers to teach memo writing I'm there. They're models of economy, euphony and wit. Verbs instead of adjectives, everything in the present tense; Stunk & White would be proud. Unfortunately for these guys there's no memo industry to absorb them. They had a skill with no place to go, so they bailed out into animation, which they dominate.

If I can digress for a minute.... did you know that at one time arists dominated the pulp sci-fi industry? Well, sort of. The editor of one one of the early science fiction magazines (Gernsback? Cambell? Amazing Stories? Astounding?) used to provoke his artists to come up with wild, imaginative covers then, when he got something he liked, he called in a writer to write a story that would justify it. Interesting, huh?

When I heard this the first time I felt sorry for the writers, who after all are entitled to dominate the industry that they created (Jules Verne, H.G. Wells), but I sometimes wonder if my sympathy was misplaced. Some writers like to call the post-pulp era the golden age of science fiction, but was it? You could argue that the writer-driven psychological stories that came to dominate sci-fi eventually killed it. Maybe the genre was healthier when it dealt with weird gadgets and monsters. Maybe but....hmmmm, I think I'll still come down on the writers side on this one. It just makes sense to me that writers should call the shots in their own writing industry.

And animators should call the shots in the animation industry! Why do writers fail to see the wisdom of that? Well, there's an obvious answer. Money. Animation writers are like kids in a candy store. There's gold in them thar hills! After the style and tone of a show is set the rest of the stories are easy to write and there's lots of time left over to write freelance stories for other projects. Animation writers are often loaded to the gills with freelance! They can't be bothered to edit a script to a proper length (it's faster to write a long script than a short one), or to figure out really clever plots and dialogue (Sigh!).

Well, I still like writers. Real writers, that is, writers who care about character, plot, humor and writing for performance. I'll end with that. There's more to say but this'll do for a start.

BTW, I know of a couple of writer sites that are all about classic comics and drawn media. I have nothing but sympathy and well wishes for these sites but they don't amount to a contradiction of what I said about animation writers not discussing words and plots with any frequency.

Also BTW, the pictures here are of Shakespeare, Hugo and Dickens.

THE BABY AD

I liked this ad for Pet Evaporated Milk (above) so much that a few years ago I thumbnailed an animated version of it just to see what it might look like. Some of the mother drawings are terrible and I was tempted to redraw this before posting it here but the old drawings have the virtue of being done and that counts for a lot. Anyway thanks to John K whose drawings of my kids inspired this. John draws the best babies ever.

GWEETINGTH ART LOVERTH! (Part 2)

A day at the art museum with Uncle Eddie! We don't stand on formalities here, let's plunge right in!

Here's (above) Gainsborough's "Blue Boy." Cartoonists love it because it's the ultimate depiction of a sissyfied Lord Fauntleroy-type. The painting wasn't based on the Fauntleroy novel, and the boy in the novel wasn't a sissy, but the public remembers him that way and who am I to dispute it? Anyway, this painting and I have history.

One halloween I went out and bought a Fauntleroy/Blue Boy suit. I raced home with it, chuckling all the way, thinking of all the gags I could play with it. Breathlessly I put it on in the bathroom, carefull not to look in the mirror till the ensemble was complete. At long last I finished adjusting the lace collar, put the hat on, and proudly stared into the mirror, expecting to erupt with laughter.

Well... it was a looooong look and I felt like doing anything but laughing. I struggled to identify the emotion I was feeling. To my surprise it was...no use trying to hide it...violence. I wanted to hit the figure in the mirror. I couldn't figure out why. I wasn't a gay-basher in real life, why the sudden impulse to destroy? Puzzled, I walked into the living room to see what my family thought. I thought I'd get a laugh from at least one of them. Instead they all turned white with horror. My wife finally said in a tembling voice: "Eddie, that suit...it makes me want to...to hit you." That did it. I packed up the suit and retired it.

I'm convinced that what I felt had nothing to do with resentment against gays. Even gays would have wanted to hit the person in the mirror. The suit is simply the most potent lure to violence ever created. It would have turned Ghandi into a bully. It just has bad juju.

Moving along, here's (above) the "Mona Lisa." I have to say that it looks funny to me and I sometimes wonder if that was Leonardo's intention. I thought that seeing it in person might give me an insight but when I stumbled across it in the Louvre it was roped off, covered with glass, heavily guarded and surrounded by the backs of tall tourists. I couldn't see a thing. Ah, well.

Here's (above) the Venus di Milo, beloved by cartoonists everywhere because they're always trying to think of dirty things her arms might be doing. Of course Venus isn't the most revered scupture. That honor belongs to the plaster hood ornament-type figure that you always see on pedestals in the homes of the cartoon rich. I wonder if that scupture ever really existed. It looks a little like a famous black Donatello (or is it Cellini) figure but that's not quite the same.

On this wall (above) we find "Whistler's Mother," another cartoonist favorite. Boy, she keeps a clean home! It always strikes me as funny when people sit with their shoulder against a wall even if it's in a reataurant. I mean the natural thing is to sit with the wall at your back. How odd it is to press yourself against a man-made cliff with all the pictures on one side diminishing in railroad perspective infront of you.

Last but not least, Grant Wood's "American Gothic." You can laugh at this picture but it'll be around when all of us have turned to dust. There's something so primal and funny about it. It's how every adolescent regards his parents, how every writer regards his editors, how every employee regards his boss. If you're a painter, and all you want is to be remembered, then pick a primal emotion and depict the ultimate distillation of it.

SKETCHES

Some doodles from a video tape. I meant to draw more but I'm sooooo sleepy!

MY FAVORITE NFB CARTOONS

These National Film Board films from the late 70s and 80s are among my favorite cartoons of the last several decades. It's hard to believe now but there was a time when Canada was poised to take over the cartoon industry. Why it didn't happen would make an interesting book. The creative people were there but business mysteriously failed to recognize and support them. Why? I can only guess. As time went by a lot of NFB people were absorbed into mainstream TV and a great opportunity was lost.

"Get a Job" (above) was done by Brad Caslor who I'm told has since renounced animation and is now a live-action editor with an interest in radical left politics. People say that the Job film nearly broke his back. It was an enormous undertaking for one man and his friends to do and the film board subsidy wasn't enough to feed a mouse. When he finally dotted the last "i" in 1985 he swore "Never Again!" and turned his back on animation. Too bad! His own style was great and the Clampett influence certainly didn't hurt.




Here's (above) "The Cat Came Back" (1988) by Cordell Barker.




Here's (above)"The Big Snit" (1984) by Richard Condie. Condie's doing 3D now but I like his old 2D stuff better. His last film may have been "La Salla." You can see a clip from it on the NFB site.

WHY ARE KIDS SO SURLY?

Boy, teenagers are a surly lot! I should know, I was a surly teen myself.

I grew up with my grandparents who in many ways resembled Archie and Edith Bunker from the famous TV series. My grandad was a lot bigger and meaner than Archie but he had a similar attitude about life. During the whole time I was growing up he never said a kind word to me. He either yelled or maintained an icy silence. My grandmother was kind-hearted, sentimental and a little bit ditsy, just like Edith. She did like kids and lavished loving attention on me even when I was a surly teen and probably didn't deserve it.

Now I was a cute, obedient kid when I was young but somehow I turned into a surly teenager. I communicated with my grandparents through an inch-wide crack in my bedroom door and showed signs of being insufferably bored and restless whenever they tried to talk to me. I ascribe it to hormones but who knows what the real reasons were? Maybe I felt justified for being rebelious because my grandfather was such a Type-A and my grandmother was so suffocating.

Fast forward to the the present. I have college-age kids of my own who were in their turn surly to me (the kids in the photos aren't mine, I got the pictures from the internet). Don't get me wrong, they're not like that now, and they were never as bad as I was, but when they were 16 I only knew them as eyes who appeared through a crack in their bedroom doors and said, "Whaddaya want?" It's a shocking example of karma. I snubbed others and later became the snubbed.

Anyway, here's the really interesting part. When I grew up and my grandparents had passed away I found out the truth about my grouchy grandfather. It turns out that he was all worn out from working a lifelong job that he hated in order to provide a home for my Dad and his brothers and sisters. He just wanted a quiet retirement. He was always grouchy even when he was young, but he raised his family well and they all became effective adults. When I was dumped in his arms as a baby he was crest-fallen. He could have sent me to an orphanage, I'm sure he thought about it, but he didn't. Out of a sense of duty he kept me and it made all the difference.

Now my grandfather didn't like kids, not even cute ones like me, but he really didn't like surly teenagers. It must have really grated on him that I did minimal chores, resisted any kind of responsibility, kept all the money I made from kid jobs, ate his food, wore the clothes he bought, hogged the TV, snubbed him at every opportunity, and never once thanked him. He didn't like me but he persevered through this abuse every day because he thought it was the right thing to do.

As a consequence I grew up in a nice neighborhood, went to a nice school and had nice friends. It could easily have been otherwise. The grouchy, icy-kid hater I grew up resenting turned out to be a massive benefactor. Sounds like the kid and the convict in "Great Expectations" doesn't it?

So there it is: I owe everything to an irritable grouch who didn't like me, and he died before I could acknowledge it. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep for worrying about it. My message to surly teenagers and ex-teenagers is....buy sleep insurance by forgiving your parents their faults. Forgive them 100%, meaning that you'll never again even think of their past mistakes. You can get mad at them for what they do next week but never again for anything they did in the past. You simply don't have the perspective to see those past events objectively. Forgive them, thank them, help them if they need it, then carry on with your life unburdened with surliness.

THE ORIGIN OF COMIC STRIPS

Here, so far as I can tell, is the origin of the modern comic strip. Caveat: take this with a grain of salt; I'm no expert on the subject and I might have over-simplified things.

Well, you could argue that it all began with Daumier (example above). Sure there was Hogarth, Cruikshank and others but Daumier was different. His lithographs weren't just beautiful and funny, they retained the fluid feel of the original sketches. Not only that but Daumier was a famous easel painter and that bought a lot of credibility for his cartoons. Cartooning was considered a low-class activity in Daumier's time and his fine art reputation did a lot to make it acceptable to the middle class.


Success always breeds imitators and Daumier's imitator was a guy named Cham (example above). Cham got his foot in the door by offering simplified Daumier-style drawings in a series for the same price that Daumier got for just one picture. Cham might have been a weasel but he did help to popularize the idea that cartoons should tell a story using multiple pictures.

Cham was so successful that he inspired a German named Rodolphe Topffler to try his hand. Topffler used Cham's serial panel technique but drew the characters in what he called the "outline method," a technique that didn't require Daumier's painterly tones and shadows. I don't know if Topffler was an aristocrat but he seemed to want the public to think that he was. His outline method was executed in a deliberately crude style so that it would appear that he just dashed them out for his own amusement and had no thought of making money with them.

Back in France, Dore saw what Topffler was doing and approved, only he thought the outline method worked better if the characters were a bit more realistic and were carefully inked. Dore wasn't very fond of the serial picture method. He preferred big, Jack Davis-type crowd scenes like the one above.

Back in Germany Wilhelm Busch (example above) combined the best ideas of all the artists I just mentioned: Daumier's belief that cartoons could be fine art, Cham's multiple panel idea, Topffler's outline technique and Dore's clean-up theories. Busch was the first artist to make a good living exclusively by doing funny panel cartoons. People say he was the first truly modern master of the comic strip. After him comes the great German-American newspaper artists like Dirks, the creator of "The Katzenjammer Kids." You know the rest.

A few questions remain. Where were the English while all this was going on? Why did the creative torch pass to the United States? Who invented the modern version of the word balloon?